Sponsored by IMG Academy

Friday, May 19, 2017

While I was in Ojai last month I had an opportunity to interview Men's Open champion Henry Craig on his transition from college tennis to professional tennis for this article at the Tennis Recruiting Network. We talked about how college prepared him for the next level and how long he will give himself to break through before putting his business degree to use.

I'll get to the NCAA Division I women's Sweet 16 matches today in a minute, but there's other news, including today's announcement that Chris Woodruff will take over as the men's head tennis coach at the University of Tennessee. Woodruff, who has served as assistant/associate coach in Knoxville since 2004, takes over for Sam Winterbotham, who was let go earlier this month. Woodruff, the NCAA singles champion in 1993 while a sophomore at Tennessee, was passed over for the job when Winterbotham was hired in 2006, but he stayed on and will now have a chance to guide the program with that much more experience. For more on Woodruff's hiring, see this article from the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Sam Riffice, also 18, has reached the semifinals of the $15,000 Futures in Romania, with the qualifier defeating No. 6 Petru-Alexandru Luncanu of Romania 6-0, 7-5 today. Riffice, who recently reached the final of the Vero Beach Florida Futures, will play top seed Yannik Mertens of Belgium in the semifinals. Mertens beat qualifier Gianni Ross 2-6, 6-3, 6-4 in the quarterfinals. Both Riffice and Ross are scheduled to play in next week's ITF Grade A in Milan Italy, where qualifying begins on Saturday.

Pepperdine's Luisa Stefani readies herself for the celebration

As was the case yesterday in the Division I men's Sweet 16, the women's Sweet 16 also featured two 4-3 matches, but unfortunately for the Georgia fans, this time the home team came out on the wrong end of that score. Pepperdine, the No. 12 seed, took the doubles point from the No. 5 seeds, and in singles three straight-set matches went to the Bulldogs, and two straight-set matches went to the Waves. That left the outcome to be decided at line 1, the only match to go three sets, with Luisa Stefani defeating Ellen Perez 6-7(8), 6-2, 6-2 to clinch.
The third set saw five consecutive breaks of serve to start, but Stefani was able to get two holds and she served well in the final game to send the Georgia crowd home disappointed.

Pepperdine will play No. 4 seed Vanderbilt, a 4-1 winner over Cal, in the quarterfinals.

The other 4-3 match went to 2016 finalist Oklahoma State. The No. 9 seeds defeated No. 8 seeds Georgia Tech after dropping the doubles point but taking singles matches at lines 1, 2, 3 and 6. The match came down to Georgia Tech's Paige Horigan and Oklahoma State's Aliona Bolsova. Horigan got back on serve after trailing 4-2 in the third set, but Bolsova won two deuce points in the next two games to take the match 7-5, 1-6, 6-3. Oklahoma State will face top seed Florida, who beat Texas A&M, the only unseeded team in the women's Sweet 16, 4-0.

In the early matches, No. 7 seed Stanford defeated No. 10 seed Michigan 4-1 and No. 2 seed North Carolina rolled past No. 15 seed Duke 4-0, with the Cardinal and Tar Heels set to meet Sunday in the quarterfinals. The noon matches saw No. 3 seed Ohio State defeat No. 14 seed South Carolina 4-1 and No. 6 seed Texas Tech come back from losing the doubles point to take out Auburn 4-2. It's the first visit to the quarterfinals for Texas Tech in the program's history.

Below are the women's results from today. A recap of the match can be found by clicking on the bold score line. See Georgiadogs.com for more on each match, including quotes.

2
comments:

Wondering
said...

Colette, do you or anyone know why Livestats deletes scores while a match is still underway. For example, TCU and OSU are playing right now. Courts 4 and 1 are in the 3 set and the match is still underway. Live stats has deleted all results of the courts that have finished. Why doesn't live stats leave the results of all matches on the scoreboard? At least untlil the overall match has finished?